Hacker News Scraper — Stories, Points & Search

Scrape Hacker News data — stories, points, authors, and comment counts — into one unified dataset using the official Firebase API (live lists) and the Algolia HN Search API (full-text search). No login, no proxies, no browser, no API key.

Pull the live front page (top / new / best / ask / show / job), search the entire HN archive by keyword, or look up specific items by ID.

What you get

Every story is returned as one row (recordType: "story"):

Field	Description
itemId	HN item ID
type	story / comment / job / poll
title	story title
url	linked article URL (null for text posts)
author	submitter username
points	score / upvotes
numComments	number of comments
createdAt	ISO timestamp
text	body text for Ask HN / text posts
hnUrl	link to the HN discussion
dead / deleted	moderation flags

Input

{
  "lists": ["top"],
  "search": ["rust"],
  "itemIds": ["8863"],
  "limit": 30,
  "sortByDate": false,
  "tags": "story"
}

• lists — live lists to fetch: top, new, best, ask, show, job.
• search — keywords to full-text search HN (Algolia).
• itemIds — specific HN item IDs to fetch.
• limit — max stories per list/search (1–500).
• sortByDate — for search, return newest instead of most relevant.
• tags — Algolia tag filter (story, comment, show_hn, ask_hn, poll).

Provide at least one of lists, search, or itemIds. Stories found across multiple sources are de-duplicated by item ID.

Sample output

One dataset row (a story from the front page):

{
  "recordType": "story",
  "itemId": "49395628",
  "type": "story",
  "title": "There's no reason for software to be slow anymore",
  "url": "https://danluu.com/perf-opt/",
  "author": "Jach",
  "points": 185,
  "numComments": 146,
  "createdAt": "2026-08-22T01:06:17.000Z",
  "text": null,
  "hnUrl": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49395628",
  "dead": false,
  "deleted": false
}

Why it's reliable & cheap

Every request hits an official public HN API (Firebase for live data, Algolia for search) — no headless browser, no anti-bot walls, no API key. Transient errors (rate limits, 5xx, network blips) are retried automatically, and an unreachable source is reported and skipped — one bad source never fails the whole run.

Use cases

• Tech-trend monitoring — track what's rising on the front page or by keyword
• Content & competitive research — find every HN discussion about a product or topic
• Sentiment & discussion mining — feed titles and text into an NLP pipeline
• Growth & PR — get notified when your company or project hits HN

FAQ

Do I need an API key or login? No. It uses the official public Hacker News Firebase API and the Algolia HN Search API — no key, no account, no proxy.

Is it free to try? Yes — click Try for free and run the prefilled top-stories list in seconds.

Can I search old stories, not just the front page? Yes — search queries the entire HN archive via Algolia; lists pull the live front page.

Can I get comments? Search with tags: "comment" to return comment records; every story also carries its comment count.

Is this allowed? Both APIs are official, public, and key-free — built for exactly this kind of use.

Pricing

Pay per result — $5 per 1,000 stories. Runs that return nothing cost nothing. No monthly fee, no proxy costs.